Human-Centered Data Collection; Engaging Kinesthetic Learners

Human-Centered Data Collection; Engaging Kinesthetic Learners

Start planning to collect impact data from your STEM education programs that will engage the minds and hearts of your kinesthetic learners. The ILC Human-Centered data collection process was built to respond to ALL types of learners including visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. For instance, we collect data from focus group participants about past experiences through a facilitation strategy known as “Touch-Point Timeline”. Participants’ experiences are written anonymously on post-its and adhered to a timeline categorized by key ages of a person’s development. All participants then get up, move around the room and read each others’ timeline—reflecting not only on major life influences, but those of fellow participants, noticing similarities and diversities. This process allows us to capture what most researchers compile from survey instruments but is a more human interactive data collection process.

Another data collection facilitation strategy ILC uses is called “Describe Your Passion, Describe Your Hero”. This activity allows individual strengths to come forward as participants express passions and describe participants’ heros. During this activity, participants are asked to make eye contact with someone they do not regularly interact with and sit elbow-to-elbow, knee-to- knee.

Participants are asked to converse for 10 minutes, each getting 5 minutes, in which they share their passion and hero stories. The listening person records the response of the other and both post their responses for the entire group to read. Hero stories reveal a significant amount of data about participants’ perspectives and experiences.

These are only two examples of the social innovation we use to enhance the engagement of all types of learners during the data collection process. Our rigorous qualitative training, facilitation of these human-centered data collection strategies, and propensity to learn through listening allows us to capture human centered data for our clients.